Winklevoss Twins File for $20M Bitcoin Public Offering

Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss say they’ve sewn up about 1 percent of the world’s Bitcoins, and now they want to offer you a piece of the action.

On Monday, they filed forms with the Securities and Exchange Commission, saying they intend to offer shares of their Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust to the public. They plan to register 1 million shares — each one representing .20 Bitcoins — in the trust, which will trade at $20 on the day of the IPO.

In April, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss told The New York Times that they owned about $11 million worth of Bitcoins, or about 1 percent of the total amount of the digital currency in circulation. Since then, they’ve been tireless Bitcoin promoters. Bitcoins peaked in early April, trading as high as $260, but the currency quickly crashed and has hovered in the $100 range since then. On Monday, Bitcoins were trading for $87 on the Mt. Gox exchange.

It might seem easier to simply buy Bitcoins, but the Trust will be a useful vehicle to some, says Patrick Murck, general counsel with the Bitcoin Foundation. It “puts the investment in a format that institutional and non-technical investors can get behind,” he said via text message.

The 74-page prospectus includes 17 pages of risk factors.

In 2007, the twins were awarded $20 million in cash and $45 million in stock to settle a lawsuit, after they claimed that they had been defrauded by their former Harvard classmate Mark Zuckerberg when he founded Facebook.

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